Associate Professor of Psychology, Director, NYU Infant Cognition and Communication Lab, New York University

Natural Selection is the Only Engine of Evolution

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But more recent studies–using modern reproduction techniques like in vitro fertilization and proper controls–can physically isolate generations from each other and rule out any kind of social transmission or learning. For example, mice that were fear-conditioned to an otherwise neutral odor produced baby mice that also feared that odor. Their grandbaby mice feared it too. But unlike in Pavlov’s studies, communication couldn’t be the explanation. Because the mice never fraternized, and cross-fostering experiments further ruled out social transmission, the newly acquired specific fear had to be encoded in their biological material. (Biochemical analysis showed that the relevant change was likely in the methylation of olfactory reception genes in the sperm of the parents and offspring. Methylation is one example of an epigenetic mechanism.) Natural selection is still the primary shaper of evolutionary change, but the inheritance of acquired traits might play an important role too.

These findings fit in a relatively new field of study called epigenetics. Epigenetic control of gene expression contributes to cells in a single organism (which share the same DNA sequence) developing differently into e.g. heart cells or neurons. But the last decade has shown actual evidence–and possible mechanisms–for how the environment and the organism’s behavior in it might cause heritable changes in gene expression (with no change in the DNA sequence) that are passed onto offspring. In recent years, we have seen evidence of epigenetic inheritance across a wide range of morphological, metabolic, and even behavioral traits.

The intergenerational transmission of acquired traits is making a comeback as a potential mechanism of evolution. It also opens up the interesting possibility that better diet, exercise, and education which we thought couldn’t affect the next generation–except with luck through good example–actually could”

Race has always been a vague and slippery concept. In the mid-eighteenth century, European naturalists such as Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, and Johannes Blumenbach described geographic groupings of humans who differed in appearance. The philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant both were fascinated by human physical diversity. In their opinions, extremes of heat, cold, or sunlight extinguished human potential. Writing in 1748, Hume contended that, “there was never a civilized nation of any complexion other than white.”

Kant felt similarly. He was preoccupied with questions of human diversity throughout his career, and wrote at length on the subject in a series of essays beginning in 1775. Kant was the first to name and define the geographic groupings of humans as races (in German, Rassen). Kant’s races were characterized by physical distinctions of skin color, hair form, cranial shape, and other anatomical features and by their capacity for morality, self-improvement, and civilization. Kant’s four races were arranged hierarchically, with only the European race, in his estimation, being capable of self-improvement.

Why did the scientific racism of Hume and Kant view prevail in the face of the logical and thoughtful opposition of von Herder and others? During his lifetime, Kant was recognized as a great philosopher, and his status rose as copies of his major philosophical works were distributed and read widely in the nineteenth century. Some of Kant’s supporters agreed with his racist views, some apologized for them, or—most commonly—many just ignored them. The other reason that racist views triumphed anti-racism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was that racism was, economically speaking, good for the transatlantic slave trade, which had become the overriding engine of European economic growth. The slave trade was bolstered by ideologies that diminished or denied the humanity of non-Europeans, especially Africans. Such views were augmented by newer biblical interpretations popular at the time that depicted Africans as destined for servitude. Skin color, as the most noticeable racial characteristic, became associated with a nebulous assemblage of opinions and hearsay about the inherent natures of the different races. Skin color stood for morality, character, and the capacity for civilization; it had become a meme. The nineteenth and early twentieth saw the rise of “race science.” The biological reality of races was confirmed by new types of scientific evidence amassed by new types of scientists, notably anthropologists and geneticists. This era witnessed the birth of eugenics and its offspring, the concept of racial purity. The rise of Social Darwinism further reinforced the notion that the superiority of the white race was part of the natural order. The fact that all people are products of complex genetic mixtures resulting from migration and intermingling over thousands of years was not admitted by the racial scientists, nor by the scores of eugenicists who campaigned on both sides of the Atlantic for the improvement of racial quality.

The mid-twentieth century witnessed the continued proliferation of scientific treatises on race. By the 1960s, however, two factors contributed to the demise of the concept of biological races. One of these was the increased rate of study of the physical and genetic diversity human groups all over the world by large numbers of scientists. The second factor was the increasing influence of the civil rights movement in the United States and elsewhere. Before long, influential scientists denounced studies of race and races because races themselves could not be scientifically defined. Where scientists looked for sharp boundaries between groups, none could be found.

Despite major shifts in scientific thinking, the sibling concepts of human races and a color-based hierarchy of races remained firmly established in mainstream culture through the mid-twentieth century. The resulting racial stereotypes were potent and persistent, especially in the United States and South Africa, where subjugation and exploitation of dark-skinned labor had been the cornerstone of economic growth.

After its “scientific” demise, race remained as a name and concept, but gradually came to stand for something quite different. Today many people identify with the concept of being a member of one or another racial group, regardless of what science may say about the nature of race. The shared experiences of race create powerful social bonds. For many people, including many scholars, races cease to be biological categories and have become social groupings. The concept of race became a more confusing mélange as social categories of class and ethnicity. So race isn’t “just” a social construction, it is the real product of shared experience, and people choose to identify themselves by race.

Clinicians continue to map observed patterns of health and disease onto old racial concepts such as “White”, “Black” or “African American”, “Asian,” etc. Even after it has been shown that many diseases (adult-onset diabetes, alcoholism, high blood pressure, to name a few) show apparent racial patterns because people share similar environmental conditions, grouping by race are maintained. The use of racial self-categorization in epidemiological studies is defended and even encouraged. In most cases, race in medical studies is confounded with health disparities due to class, ethnic differences in social practices, and attitudes, all of which become meaningless when sufficient variables are taken into account.

Race’s latest makeover arises from genomics and mostly within biomedical contexts. The sanctified position of medical science in the popular consciousness gives the race concept renewed esteem. Racial realists marshal genomic evidence to support the hard biological reality of racial difference, while racial skeptics see no racial patterns. What is clear is that people are seeing what they want to see. They are constructing studies to provide the outcomes they expect. In 2012, Catherine Bliss argued cogently that race today is best considered a belief system that “produces consistencies in perception and practice at a particular social and historical moment”.

Race has a hold on history, but it no longer has a place in science. The sheer instability and potential for misinterpretation render race useless as a scientific concept. Inventing new vocabularies of human diversity and inequity won’t be easy, but is necessary.”

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One can only be furious on what is going over there! – A clear case. Ethiopia is quasi a colonial region of the Saudis , by proxy of Ala Moudin’ s economic empire and de facto “political” power in alliance with TPLF! (This Man, a dummy figure; Shimelis divulges what they think behind closed doors, he talks exactly the opposite of what the Foreign Minister, Tewodros has aired a few days ago ) . The crux of the matter is in fact all the way through logical and has its chronological proceedings:

Let’s “Make it Simple”, in a plain language:

·1960-70 Eritrea divided into Muslim and Christians . Petrodollars play their major roles….

·1970 -1980, The Youth would be incited into confusion and had to be ideologically indoctrinated, while the imperial power would be advised to remain reform defiant until it breaks up into pieces; and the new generation would be formed in a new mind setup contrary to an Ethiopian raison d’état, thereby destroying its own imperial Kingdom, the contemporary symbolic bastion of Ethiopian unity.

·1980 -1990 a smart operation within and in support of the hegemony struggle of the superpowers. A smart Operation to hunt down, liquidate and discredit all nationally minded political actors .

· 1991, a fine tuned puppet political group from an ethnic minority , would take state power. Miracles come once in a while, and it happened this time too: The world ( the communist block shattered) is no longer divided into two but into a thousand .

·Eritrea is condemned for the fateful independence. Precedence is required! The Oromos , the Somalis, the Hadias the Wolayitas , the Sidamas, the Janjeros, the Siltes … hundreds and thousands more would for sure aspire the same path! Last but not least even the Amharas would surrender at the last moment; to go into the production of parcels and pieces of Ethiopia!

·Again ideology had to be the runner, self-determination up to and including going to pieces; ethnic wars, all against all but under the leadership of the foreign loyal group from an “heroic tribe”, the primary one/”primus inter pares”/, deserving the leadership – however all united especially against an Ethiopian unity.

·The big players: The capacity of the big petrodollar making a puppet of every “icon”, “Man and Stone” in the Country – by means of the big capital messenger, Ala- Moudin – in tandem with TPLF whose objective is demonizing any sign of national feelings towards an Ethiopian unity.

·In support of a gradual and radical expansion of the Muslim sector under a non-indigenous subtle radical indoctrination, while the state is working against the other indigenous church, to make room for the Pentecostale movement, inciting them to undermine each other so that they are weak vis a vis the former.

·With these forces on board, a new civil movement of the Muslims has come to complete the circle; albeit its justification, being instrumental for the Saudis to make the state more and more subservient.

·With Ethiopia degraded and humiliated, be it from above or below; enslaved into pieces!

·Today ” Ethiopia ” has been made a synonym for dirt in Saudi Arabia, if not in the whole Arab World ! We know, once upon a time there used to be an offending Arabic proverb on our ancestors, old Ethiopians: ” If you encounter a snake and a Habesha, together, kill first the Habesha (beat the head, like the serpent , so that he is no longer capable of thinking , disabled just as the Shimelis genre) ! ” So deep was the hatred, centuries ago, just like today, generations after !
Habesha has become = Ethiopia! How naive my generation was, and is!

·The story clearly holds water !-The story, taking place today in Saudi Arabia and in Addis Ababa!

Let us stop cheating ourselves- damn the self-delusion. We have to look at the truth squarly into the eyes. I believe that our generation has made a mess out of Ethiopia! / Granted; in those days young and naïve, but today still stubborn and incorrigible, not even after such a disaster /. Indeed, a generation that has moved mountains, it has shattered our Ethiopian mountains to make them as flat as the barbaric level of Saudi Arabia, driving us out of our highlands, into slavery and barbarism strange to our cultural record and history!

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The book is essentially made up of nine essays, and taken together they provide a series of highly instructive meditations of core existential themes in Nietzsche, such as the meaning of time, love, and death. In addition, the author makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of core doctrines in Nietzsche, notably, the death of God, nihilism, and eternal recurrence. I concur with the author when he contends that Nietzsche is primarily engaged in philosophical therapy. Nietzsche’s philosophy is a rejection of the world around us and an attempt to find a way out of the crisis and an attempt at liberation (albeit a deeply enigmatic one, I would add). For Nietzsche, the author claims, the world is sick and humanity is in need of liberation from a deep malaise, which he calls nihilism. Nietzsche’s philosophy is seen to arise “from rejection, from outrage at the world, and from the pain that the world causes” (14)http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/jns/reviews/krzysztof-michalski-the-flame-of-eternity.-an-interpretation-of-nietzsche2019s-thought.-and-espen-hammerm-philosophy-and-temporality-from-kant-to-critical-theory

The Big Leap: Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kafka

Deeply lost in the night. Just as one sometimes lowers one’s head to reflect, thus to be utterly lost in the night. All around people are asleep. It’s just play acting, and innocent self-deception, that they sleep in houses, in safe beds, under a safe roof, stretched out or curled up on mattresses, in sheets, under blankets; in reality they have flocked together as they had once upon a time and again later in a deserted region, a camp in the open, a countless number of men, an army, a people, under a cold sky on cold earth, collapsed where once they had stood, forehead pressed on the arm, face to the ground, breathing quietly. And you are watching, are one of the watchmen, you find the next one by brandishing a burning stick from the brushwood pile beside you. Why are you watching? Someone must watch, it is said. Someone must be there.[1]

Introduction

One of the defining characteristics of the later Heidegger is the concern for art and its place in humanity’s relation to Being.[2] In his Nietzsche lectures, as in his lecture on the origin of the work of art, Heidegger constructs a hermeneutical picture of the world in which art, the artistic lifestyle and the image of the artist play an important role. The world itself, Heidegger presupposes, is merely a dynamic set of relations, properties and attributes which construes the entirety of human possibilities, thus, of human meanings and significances. As such, Heidegger claims, it is hidden and forgotten, undisclosed and unapproachable in its entirety, buried six feet under several layers of metaphysical misconstructions and religious anxieties. The world of art, on the other hand, offers resolution and disclosure. It reveals the basic fields of significance, which are otherwise repressed and ignored. Art and the way of the artist reveal not only the totality of meanings but also and mainly the mere possibility of meaning at all. A work of art, Heidegger argues, reveals the very event of disclosure – the disclosure-as-such – and not only the radical tension that specifically articulates the world of references and relations. Thus, Heidegger seeks to comprehend the meticulous way in which art itself as such discloses disclosure by revealing disclosure in the work of art.

In this paper I intend to apply Heidegger’s conception of art as the ultimate and utter disclosure of “being as a whole” to the work of two extraordinary thinkers: Nietzsche and Kafka. It seems at first glance that these two thinkers share no common ground. The former is a philosopher-artist, the teacher and creator of the Eternal Recurrence and the Will to Power, the mad[3] watchman at the gateway of the artistic becoming[4] and the barbaric destructor of nihilism. The latter, on the other hand, is an artist-philosopher, the creator of the Kafkaesque picture of the world that negates any possibility of becoming. Nietzsche gives birth to a new man at the moment’s gateway[5] who rises out of the ashes of the nihilistic God-free world to create new laws and new ethics. Kafka, on the other hand, hopelessly tortures his protagonists, ridicules their naivety, mocks their beliefs, and aimlessly puts to them the Sisyphean task of charging their own gateways.[6] Nietzsche’s protagonists can deify themselves and become supermen; Kafka’s protagonists will never enter the gate of law and will never reach the promised castle.[7] Zarathustra, the most predominant Nietzschean artist, recreates himself and is finally consoled while disclosing life in its entirety; K., the wretched advocate of the Kafkaesque picture of the world, is doomed never to succeed, despite continuing and excruciating efforts, in any of his missions, and inevitably dies.

Despite the apparent abyss gaping between Nietzsche’s and Kafka’s worlds, the two seem to share one crucial idea.